Rating: 
Summary: A fairy tale for adults, sweetly concocted
Review: Sweets and fairy tales go together well--think about Hansel and Gretel's gingerbread house, and the Snow Queen's evil Turkish delight in The Chronicles of Narnia. Well, why should kids have all the fun? Chocolat is a fairy tale for adults, told very like a fairy tale and filmed with great humor. It's not a deep film, but it is marvelous fun and great to lighten anyone's mood.The premise is Mary-Poppins-like; Vianne and her daughter blow into an uptight French town of of Lansquenet, wearing red cloaks like Red Riding Hood. This clues you into the fairy-tale nature of the film. While they settle into a delapidated patisserie, respectable townspeople and their mayor, the Count, are attending church just as Lent begins. Vianne opens a confiserie (sweet shop) and the battle lines are drawn; how dare that unmarried hussy, who refuses to attend Mass, open a shop for sweets during Lent? She must be stopped, somehow. The count enlists the local townspeople and bullies the hapless young priest into mounting a campaign against pleasure. Meanwhile, Vianne dispenses magic with her chocolate creations, each one containing something needed by her customers. But who takes care of Vianne, who inherited her magic and gypsy ways from her Mexican mother? The use of color in the costumes adds to the fairy tale atmosphere (red for earthiness, blue for respectability, brown for mourning.) The cast is amusing; Juliette Binoche does a lot with very few words, Johnny Depp is predictably sexy but not overdone, and Judi Dench as usual, commands the screen. Alfred Molina, the puritanical count, looks a lot like Terry Jones' Mr. Creosote from Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life." This adds hugely to the amusement during the final scenes of the film. The town used to film Chocolate is Flavigny, which happens to be known for famous sweets created in the local abbey, a cute touch. If you watch the film, you may want to make some hot chocolate a la Chocolatier Maya, Vianne's shop. Here is a recipe that approximates it. The director of the film kept a pot of this brewing the entire time while filming and the aroma on the set was supposed to be quite enticing.
2 ounces (squares) bitter chocolate
1 cup hot water
3 tablespoons honey
dash salt
3 cups hot milk (can use half and half)
4 sticks cinnamon
A generous pinch of chili colorado (red chili powder, fresh as you can get.) Grate the chocolate and melt it in the water. Add honey, salt, chili and beat the hot chocolate water with a balloon wire whip as you add to the warmed milk. A scraped vanilla bean is nice, as is a bit of powdered almonds. Enjoy!
Rating: 
Summary: An engaging way to spend two hours
Review: My expectations for this movie would be that it would be one of those uplifting but ultimately shallow movies where a predictable and heavy-handed plot would drag the movie along. I was pleasantly surprised that this movie was far more than I had originally thought it would be. This movie tells the story of a dull French town which has existed in a tradition of religious piety and colorless humility for centuries. Only the arrival of Juliette Binoche who opens a chocolate shop can change the town. Binoche is one of those actresses that seems to radiate an inner beauty in films. Just watching her is a pleasant experience since she seems so lovely (and not just on a physical level). At times the plot did seem somewhat predictable, but I fell in love with this movie anyway. The setting was lovely and I thought that many of the actors were just perfect for their roles, particularly the child actors. I will admit that the accents were sort of strange, you had real French actors with believable accents interacting with British and American random accents, plus Johnny Depp's Irish accent was a bit off target. And the voice-overs were heavy-handed, seemingly to explain things in the movie that you'd have to be sleeping through the movie to not have understood. But I enjoyed this movie and found it genuinely moving and sincere. I hate reading a review that retells the plot of the movie and spoils it for someone who has never viewed it, so just go out and see this movie and you'll see what I mean!
Rating:
Summary: delightful
Review: Lasse Hallstrom's CHOCOLAT is a witty and endearing comic fable with a dream cast. It's utterly delightful. Vianne (Juliette Binoche) and her young daughter Anouk are the newcomers to a small French provincial town at the dawn of the 60's. They rent the patisserie owned by the crotchety old Armande (Judi Dench), and turn it into a chocolatiery, just in time of the Lenten fast. Soon, the miracle chocolates act like a health tonic to the staunch and moral inhabitants of the town, and Vianne soon befriends the battered wife of the town drunk (Lena Olin), who turns her life around and creates a new existence for herself. The cast also features legendary MGM musical star Leslie Caron in a small role. Also starring Carrie-Ann Moss, Johnny Depp, Alfred Molina and John Wood. The DVD includes director's commentary, deleted scenes, trailers and behind-the-scenes featurette.
Rating:
Summary: Sinfully Delicious!
Review: Trouble in demi-Paradise when a free-spirited woman blows into a French village a la Mary Poppins to open up a chocolate store right in the middle of Lent! I didn't know a THING about this movie when I agreed to see it with Sis in Law, but I think she choose very well for us. Juliette Binoche is quite charming as the chocolatiere who's getting everyone worked up but managing to subdue them all with just the right kind of truffle or cocoa. Oh, if life were only so simple in actuality! I especially loved the colors of her clothes in this movie, lovely aquas and salmons. "Chocolat" is a feast for the eye as well as the mouth (although the mouth part is vicarious, really). Dame Judi is a bit more crotchetty here than usual, but still a great performer. Depp is sexy as a gypsy guy who manages to be slightly a step ahead of Binoche, disconcerting her as the only one who's favorite chocolate she can't quite detect. I think it's interesting how many other reviewers are angry that Johnny Depp didn't have a larger role than his billing would have you believe, but I think the true qualifier for that dubious honor would be Leslie Caron. I don't think she says two words together in the movie; she just keeps looking over her shoulder to be amazed at finding John Wood there (is that really the strangest thing?).
Rating:
Summary: Wow Cool Movie!
Review: This movie is so cool I can hardy stand for it! I like how the sexy lady comes to town and make all the dumb church people have sex!!! That is so cool. Chocolate is a well-known afrodesiac, you know. And chruch people need to get a lif!!!!This was my favorite movie of all times beside Cidor House Rules and Goodwill Hunting which also is good. This movie has a good moral that people should [have more fun]! Plus I like the seenary.
Rating: 
Summary: A Pale Imitation of the Novel
Review: DO NOT READ THE NOVEL BEFORE YOU SEE THE MOVIE!
The movie is a cute little piece, but a pale imitation of the novel. The producer tried to capsule the story on his own terms, and failed.
The biggest mistake is replacing the priest with the mayor, as the Advesary of the character played by Juliette Binoche. Ms. Binoche did a fine job in her role, but her role was toned down and so stripped of the mystic and magic of the novel.
I realize it is a challenge to capsule a 300 page novel in a two hour film. However, the producer would have done better by sticking more to the original theme of freedom versus tyranny of religion.
Let me warn you in even sterner terms. If you read the book, don't see the movie. If you see the movie, don't read the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Unbearable lightness of Dep(p)th...
Review: You may enjoy dipping yourself in this candy-coated but pleasantly diverting truffle (er, I mean, 'trifle'). Free soul Juliette Binoche (literally) blows into a sleepy French hamlet with her daughter, opens up a chocolate shop, and uses her confections to solve all the local problems, from helping abused wives and mending dysfunctional families to easing the stranglehold on the townsfolk by pious politicians and clergymen ("Babette's Feast" meets "Footloose"!). Johnny Depp phones in as an Irish "river rat" who docks in town long enough to provide Binoche with her requisite love scene (he has much less screen time than his star billing suggests). The real scene stealer is Lena Olin, as the abused wife saved by Binoche (Olin delivers the movie's best line, after beaning her drunken, rampaging husband with a heavy skillet). It was interesting watching Binoche and Olin work together again after "Unbearable Lightness Of Being", and doing a role reversal (in "Lightness", Olin was the catalyst who transforms Binoche's mousy character). If you're in the mood for a fable, this just might be your cup of cocoa.
Rating:
Summary: Not by Bread Alone
Review: Sweet, this taste of chocolate on the lips. No, not man, not woman live by bread alone. Nor do we always do our best by the rigors of rules and the iron bars of regulations. Sweet, the breaking of those rules. Sweet, the taste we crave after that hearty slice of bread. We lick our lips. This is confection. This is not what the bare bone of life depends upon. This is what adds sweetness to mere survival, what adds flesh and blood. Suspend your disbelief and watch with pleasure. Don't be sticking your thumb into the bottom of your confection, now, don't! Trust with your heart and indulge. Chocolat is meant to be a sensuous pleasure, and this it fully achieves. Forget your practical diets and well meaning calories. Enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Low-calorie charmer
Review: This is a gorgeously produced movie with its heart in the right place, but ultimately it fails to deliver more than the merest trifle (pun intended) of entertainment. It's all SO well-intended and politically correct, and the story is barely believable. (How did this woman who shows up in town on foot, with only two suitcases, manage to equip and stock a confectionery store?) I enjoyed it while it lasted, even though I felt that the movie was trying to manipulate my emotions, but it left no lasting impression. Enjoy it for what it is --- a (semi) modern-day fantasy or fable -- but don't expect greatness. It's not as good as most reviewers would have you believe!
Rating:
Summary: BINOCHE & DENCH AT THEIR BEST
Review: It's just a great movie. The critics, and we all know what their thumbs are really up, missed the point although some with some class (did he just mix critic & class in the same sentence?) raved about it. It's just a good movie. Binoche at her best; Dench at her usual...superb. Better than the Book.Depp in thankfully minimal role. You want to simply be entertained, buy Chocolat. You want to LEARN something, go to college.
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